The 3 Spoon Problem

 Neurotypicals and neurodivergents may never fully understand each other’s ’methods of madness’ but I came across a simplistic and nearly forgettable instance of this in one of those missable daily chores.

For me, repetitive tasks need to become a ritual to focus on them and complete them and even then, they often have to be short and purposeful. 

I feed my cats every morning. Outside cats first, front door then back door, dry food. Then I feed what were originally my sister’s 3 cats one kind of food (anything but pate), then the kitten got sandwiched in between them and my older 2 girls because he also gets a metal bowl like the first three but he gets kitten pate (though he’ll eat anything) and the 2 girls get their pate on a plate. Different rituals because my sister and I did different things and cats are creatures of habit. The kitten’s managed to fit neatly by food type and feeding dish right between so it naturally fit in. 

As per the post headline, I use three spoons, one for each of them. I never started this intentionally, mind you, but it always made perfect sense to me. To my dad, it’s clearly a sort of unnecessary thing (more dishes to wash and he’s obsessive about how many dishes get used in a way I similarly don’t understand). He pointed it out and, instead of the cringy ‘it’s my ADHD, you wouldn’t understand’, I just said ‘don’t question it’ and that seems to be a satisfying code for the both of us.

The answer, for those of you who are on the side of not getting it (and even some NDs might not get it at first), this is a physical manifestation of a mental need for organization in the early morning chaos of my brain. I am not a morning person. I don’t enjoy getting up for this ritual. My brain is still a bit nonsensical and prone to mistakes first thing. For me, like stimming, this is a ritual necessity to start the day with a coping mechanism to prevent anxiety. I have lots of coping mechanisms and many of them I’m not even conscious of until they’re pointed out. I don’t always have a handy answer to pluck from the air anyway but when I do, it still doesn’t always fully make sense to the questioner. 

I like to believe that my dad is, over time, starting to understand that these oddities (for him) are the unspoken trials of my neurological disorder. Those with ADHD are not a hive mind and we don’t all understand the source of the quirks but we do come to understand that it’s why we get ‘looks’ or ‘comments’ from NTs and even without some weird therapy requirement, we do develop coping strategies that don’t compromise the self but do help us course-correct to avoid destructive crashes in our lives. I don’t try to avoid being ‘weird’ but I certainly try to avoid the impulses to spend money or have unhealthy emotional outbursts where I say things I probably don’t actually mean. I don’t try to ‘do things the normal way’ but I do try to explain it when I can (or reserve the right to politely decline explaining everything I do). I don’t bottle myself for the comfort of others but I do know how to find healthy outlets and not expect others to entertain me. And these aren’t wise adult strategies; many of them I started very young and just refined with understanding.

On that note, this is why I resent being told I need ‘cognitive behavior therapy’ to take Vyvanse. They aren’t going to tell me anything I don’t know. I research things like this exhaustively but I have severe ADHD and the only reason I have ever preferred stimulants is because they bring on a focus, efficiency and confidence that I struggle with and often fail to find without their help. I self-medicated in my youth and noticed things like coffee and cocaine made me ridiculously efficient whereas my peers were just ‘fucked up’ and messy. I can emotionally regulate, manage time and just FUNCTION normally with this drug. And even doctors don’t seem to understand how necessary this drug is for me to live in an NT dominated world. My coping mechanisms work fine. WITH the drug. Otherwise, I am always struggling through the brain clutter, paralysis and exhaustion of effort. Doctors are taught that it’s different for us and yet we’re still treated like addicts looking for a fix. Yes, it is a fix. To be functional in a world that is otherwise ridiculously hard to find a niche in. I don’t get my dopamine fix this way at all btw. That’s right; I get it from ASMR videos and watching kids play and cats purr and sometimes from the zone I go into when I can hyperfocus. Vyvanse is only an outlet, a key that makes who I am shareable and productive and motivated.

The 3 spoon problem isn’t fixed by drugs. But when I understand it better, I can help others understand why it’s necessary. Not everything is able to be masked and some things are very much about mental health maintenance. Not all of us want to feed into the superpower/quirk/etc. language that sometimes brushes off how debilitating it can be, so it may require some of that sensitivity into our coded language. My dad isn’t the most perceptive but he does pay attention. Sometimes that all we ask for. The understanding that this is doing something we need. Accommodations are not about going out of your way to cater to our differences. It’s just about communicating their existence. Communicate with me directly if it’s a problem that makes us undermine each other’s needs but remember I spent the better part of my life making my life harder to try not to rock the boat. It could be time to empathize and understand why crippling me isn’t actually helping either of us. Share in the discomfort; and remember if you have ND status, don’t retaliate by assuming you get privilege as part of the understanding. The other person may have it too so aim for compromise. No one needs to be the only sacrificing one. We should always be learning how to bring out the best in each other, ND or NT notwithstanding.